


Oscillate

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [34]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7297618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard +/ Rodney McKay, waking up to memories of an alternate life and not knowing which is the real one."</p><p>In which John was a Doll in the Attic, Rodney is the neurophysicist who got him out of the Attic, and John isn't sure which is real, Atlantis or the Dollhouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oscillate

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Toys in the Attic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6305383) by [nagi_schwarz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz). 



“He’s awake again,” Carson said.  
  
Rodney nodded and shrugged on his jacket, hurried to the observation room.  
  
John was sitting up on the hospital bed, rubbing his eyes and looking confused.   
  
Rodney glanced up at the security monitor before he keyed in his code and opened the door. He paused in the doorway, studying John, assessing.  
  
“Oh, hey Rodney.” John smiled fondly at him, and Rodney suppressed a sigh. “What happened? Why am I in the infirmary? Last I remember, we were just having beer on the pier.”  
  
“You injured your head,” Rodney said, which, while not entirely accurate, wasn’t really a lie either.  
  
John reached up, carded a hand through his hair. “I feel fine. I didn’t hit it, did I?”  
  
“No,” Rodney said.  
  
“Wraith stunner?”  
  
“Got it in one.” Rodney managed a grimace.   
  
John yawned. “Huh. Must have been hit harder than I initially thought. Still pretty bushed. What’s a guy gotta do to get some grub around here? Tell Carson I want the blue jello.”  
  
“I’ll do that. Go back to sleep, John.”  
  
John nodded and lay back, scratched his chest idly. Paused. “Where are my dog tags?”  
  
Damn. The devil was in the details.  
  
John raised his eyebrows. “Rodney? Why am I not wearing my dog tags? Did I die?” He started to hyperventilate. “Am I a clone, like Carson was?” He peered down the front of his hospital gown. “Where’s the scar from where Todd fed on me?” He pressed a hand to his neck. “Or where the Iratus bug got me? _Rodney?_ ”  
  
“Sleep,” Rodney said, putting some command into it, hating himself for it, but John immediately sank back like a marionette with its strings cut. Then he spun on his heel and left.  
  
“Next time, I promise to remember the dog tags,” Agent Ford said.  
  
“Dog tags are a baseline military detail,” Rodney snapped. “If we want any chance in hell of getting anything useful out of him, we need him calm, so he can transition smoothly.”  
  
Ford ducked his head and scurried away to procure some dog tags.  
  
“That could have gone better,” Carson said.  
  
Rodney slumped back down at his desk. “Tell me about it.”  
  
He spent hours poring over Topher Brink’s hard drive, but there was so much the man had kept in his own head that untangling the mess that was the Attic would take forever. If it was even possible. Rodney fell asleep in the middle of a long journal entry about Stargate Atlantis, one of the scenarios Topher had programmed for various dolls to interface with to keep the Attic Mainframe running.  
  
He woke to Carson telling him, yet again, that John was awake.  
  
When Rodney stepped into the room, John was pressed against the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, eyeing Rodney warily. His defensive posture made him look young, vulnerable. He’d been shut up in the Attic for over a decade. In many ways, he was still young. He’d been a doll for at least five years before that.   
  
“Dr. Rodney McKay?”  
  
Rodney nodded.  
  
“Which one are you? The physicist or the -”  
  
“Neurophysicist.”  
  
“No such thing.”  
  
“Like a neurochemist, on a much finer scale.”  
  
“Which is real?” John asked in a small voice. “Because I remember - I remember going to Stanford, and being married to Nancy, and going through the Stargate. I remember you and Teyla and Ronon and Ford. But I also remember - Foxtrot. Topher. The chair. All those people -” He closed his eyes.  
  
Whether he meant the people crammed inside his head or the people who’d bought him, Rodney didn’t know, and he didn’t dare ask.  
  
“This is real,” Rodney said.  
  
John opened his eyes. “Really? Because it doesn’t feel like it.” He pressed a hand to his chest where his dog tags would have rested, if he’d had some. “But Atlantis felt real. Teyla with her bantos rods, Ronon with his grunts, you with your citrus allergy.”  
  
Rodney raised his eyebrows. Apparently dolls in the Mainframe were aware of their surroundings, if he’d absorbed that detail into his scenario.  
  
“I was in love with you,” John said, then lowered his gaze. “ _He._ He was in love with you. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Was in love with Rodney McKay, his teammate. Could never tell him, of course. Regs.” He peered up at Rodney. “But I don’t even know you, do I?”  
  
“No,” Rodney agreed quietly.  
  
“What do I do now?”  
  
“You let us help you.”  
  
“Help me what?”  
  
“Remember the real world.”  
  
“You mean forget Atlantis?”  
  
It was Rodney’s turn to look away.  
  
“No offense,” John said, “but this world sucks.” He rolled onto his side, back to Rodney, and lay very still.  
  
It was a dismissal if there ever was one.  
  
Rodney went back to poring over Topher’s hard drive.  
  
When Carson woke him next, it was to inform him that John had escaped - apparently he could recall his experiences as John Sheppard on a deeper level than anyone had realized.   
  
There was a message painted on the wall above John’s bed in blood.  
  
 _Atlantis is real. Come find me when you’re ready to believe._


End file.
